WASHED AWAY BY THE PREFERENCE CASCADE: Virginia Postrel Interviews Timur Kuran About Harvey Weinstein’s Fall. Plus, how Hollywood resembles the old Soviet Union.
Archive for 2017
October 17, 2017
LOCAL NEWS DESERTS: Has Facebook killed off local newspapers through its advertising algorithms? This seems to me to be the crux:
Facebook in particular was meant to be part of the solution to the problem of sustaining hyperlocal publishers. The publishing tools and hosting services Facebook offers for free are compelling. But in sparse or poorer areas, they do not allow for the traditional civic bargain of the local press, wherein the businesses and individuals who can afford to advertise, in effect pay for the journalism that covers a community.
When you get down to it the problem was summed up by Terry Pratchett quite nicely in The Truth:
People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds…Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true.
Social media tends to provide the “olds” quite readily. Without the olds, a “news” paper is very thin – and who is willing to pay for that, civic bargain or no?
THE FIX WAS IN: Pre-Exoneration: Comey Drafted Statement Ending Clinton Email Investigation Months Before Interviewing Her, FBI Confirms. “’To me, this is so far out of bounds it’s not even in the stadium,’ Chris Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006 as assistant director for the criminal investigative division and acting executive assistant director for law enforcement services, previously told Newsweek. ‘That is just not how things operate…. It’s built in our DNA not to prejudge investigations, particularly from the top.’” Well, the rules are always different for the Clintons.
REALITY TRUMPS RHETORIC ON GREENHOUSE: America’s Emissions Are Still Declining Under Trump.
One doesn’t have to be an environmentalist to harbor fears about President Trump’s effect on America’s role in mitigating global climate change. The United States is responsible for roughly 15 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and those GHGs are driving surface temperatures upwards. Those facts make Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China concerning, to say the least.
But the picture isn’t as grim as many environmentalists fear it to be. Even now, after Scott Pruitt’s EPA move to unravel President Obama’s marquee domestic green initiative, the Clean Power Plan, American energy-related emissions are projected to drop in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). So what’s at work here? If the Trump Administration is so skeptical of climate policy, why aren’t the projections matching the doomsday rhetoric?
In large part, what’s happened to U.S. emissions since their recent peak in 2007 has occurred despite—not because—of federal policy. The Clean Power Plan was never put into place, as it was still working its way through legal challenges before Pruitt announced his intention to dismantle it. Therefore, we can’t give President Obama’s green aspirations credit for this recent drop in emissions.
Instead, the drop occurred due to market forces, specifically the displacement of coal-fired power generation by cheap, plentiful natural gas provided by the shale boom. Fracking’s flourishing has made our dirtiest form of electricity production less economical, and because natural gas plants emits half as much carbon as their coal counterparts, this shift has also made our energy mix more climate friendly.
For the most part, this will continue to be the case under Trump, which is why the EIA is expecting energy-related emissions to fall this year.
By way of comparison, how’s Europe doing?
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Owner Of Dozens Of Malls Says They Won’t Be Open On Thanksgiving This Year.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University Prez ‘surprised’ and ‘shocked’ that University of Florida must allow free speech.
TIM BLAIR HILARIOUSLY ANNOTATES a softball Hillary interview.
LOOKING FOR A RUSSIAN BRIBERY PLOT? HERE IT IS, AND IT INVOLVES OBAMA AND CLINTON: FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow.
Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.
They also obtained an eyewitness account – backed by documents – indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.
The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.
Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefitting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions. . . .
“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.
So it was basically a coverup. Plus:
The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.
Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI.
The connections to the current Russia case are many.
Well none of this builds confidence.
MARK PENN: You Can’t Buy the Presidency for $100,000.
This is the same Mark Penn who’s been polling for the Clintons for two decades:
Look at the bigger picture. Every day, Americans see hundreds of ads on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and smartphones. North Americans post to Facebook something like a billion times a day, and during the election many of those messages were about politics. Facebook typically runs about $40 million worth of advertising a day in North America.
Then consider the scale of American presidential elections. Hillary Clinton’s total campaign budget, including associated committees, was $1.4 billion. Mr. Trump and his allies had about $1 billion. Even a full $100,000 of Russian ads would have erased just 0.025% of Hillary’s financial advantage. In the last week of the campaign alone, Mrs. Clinton’s super PAC dumped $6 million in ads into Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
I have 40 years of experience in politics, and this Russian ad buy, mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate. Converting someone who voted for the other party last time is an enormously difficult task. Swing voters in states like Ohio or Florida are typically barraged with 50% or more of a campaign’s budget. Try watching TV in those states the week before an election and you will see how jammed the airwaves are.
Yes, but it’s much easier for Democrats to blame Russia than to admit that Hillary squandered a billion dollars of donor money and her husband’s legacy on the most tin-eared and inept campaign since Mike Dukakis went on sabbatical just as Lee Atwater’s attack machine went into full gear.
Plus: “The only way Russia will get its money’s worth is if Washington overreacts and narrows the very freedoms that make America different in the first place.”
That’s what I’ve been arguing on this page for months now.
MICHAEL BARONE: Erik Prince should run for senator — in Michigan.
Related: Former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen Mulling Tennessee Senate Bid. He’s the only Democrat of sufficient stature left in the state. I worked with him a fair amount when I was on a state commission while he was governor, and have a high opinion of him. But he’s been out of office for 8 years, and the state has changed a lot. Also, it’s a lot harder to make a difference in the Senate. Like his replacement as Tennessee governor, Bill Haslam, Bredesen is a manager. Not sure the Senate is his cup of tea. But the Dems don’t have much of a bench in the state anymore.
BETTERIDGE’S LAW OF HEADLINES, VIOLATED: Are we headed for Turkish-American breakup?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Method to Trump’s ‘Madness.’ “Pollsters, pundits, and the media have vastly underestimated how many in America loathe multimillionaire celebrities, pampered athletes, and triangulating politicians—the usual targets of Trump’s invective.”
VARIETY: Judgment Day: Harvey Weinstein Scandal Could Finally Change Hollywood’s Culture of Secrecy. “There’s a vicious cycle of emotional violence. People come into the industry, working grueling hours in agency mail rooms or as production assistants on film sets, where they are screamed at and belittled. As they rise, they hurl the same invective at underlings that they once were forced to endure.”
THE HILL: GOP rep: It’s ‘existential’ that Republicans get tax reform done. I agree.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump, McConnell, Weinstein, and Much, Much More.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: These are the router makers that have patched KRACK WPA2 Wi-Fi flaws.
Ubiquiti is on the list, and I use and highly recommend their Unifi line of wifi gear.
LAW PROFESSORS AS TRIATHLETES.